I was honoured to join The African Leadership University (Rwanda & Mauritius) to mark Global Entrepreneurship Week as part of a Fireside Chat on 19th November along with Kevin Rugamba, discussing the interplay of the Creative Industry and Entrepreneurship.
Below are highlights from the panel:
Making the transition from the creative industry to entrepreneurship development was seamless because all the skills acquired from working in the arts, film and television taught me how to monetise intellectual property and prepared me for the opportunity to design the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.
However, being creative is not simply a lifestyle. Creativity must be thought of as a long-term business opportunity.
Seeing how fragile and unstructured the creative industry is in Africa, it is not enough to just be a creative – creatives must also be entrepreneurial. A “creative” should automatically mean “creative entrepreneur”.
Despite the explosion of creative talent on the continent, capital flight continues, and Africans are not benefiting from their own intellectual property. To resolve this, African creatives must begin to develop business management skills or bring people with these skills into their teams.
The creative sector is often absent from the entrepreneurship ecosystem because creatives do not think of themselves as entrepreneurs and often do not realise that they can take advantage of already-existing opportunities such as incubators and other entrepreneurship development programmes. This mindset must change.
The creative sector also deserves industry status, and needs to be taken seriously by African governments. This kind of recognition creates support, an enabling environment, and infrastructure development from the government that will help the sector thrive.
Despite the continent’s diverse range of creative talent, collaborations are underutilised. Creative industries cannot be regarded in silos; collaboration is necessary with creatives in other industries to create collectives that feed off each other’s creativity.
Creative entrepreneurs can create more value for their craft by building narratives that help them establish rapport with their audience, staying consistent in content quality and frequency of delivery, and building partnerships with other creatives.
Through their work, African creatives have the opportunity to inspire Africans to be proud of their culture and heritage, and raise their self-esteem. Africans are starting to embrace their own culture and style through different creative media, and current and future generations will increasingly be willing to spend more to support this industry.
Finally, creatives can no longer think of money as a dirty word, and should take advantage of the interconnectedness afforded by our digital age to build monetization models that are suitable for their creative work.